Recycling of obsolete and unwanted products provides benefits over alternatives such as disposal in landfills or incineration. Such recycling benefits individuals, companies, and society both financially and by reducing the impact of disposal on the environment. Although applicable to most manufactured products, recycling is of particular interest for information technology products such as personal computers, displays, printers and associated devices because of the ever shortening life cycle before obsolescence of such products.
Individual owners as well as companies need to dispose of this obsolete and unwanted equipment. It is typically shipped or delivered to a recycling point operated by a company engaged in the recycling business. Grenchus, Keene, and Nobs describe some aspects of such a recycling business in “Demanufacturing of Information Technology Equipment,” published in the Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, pages 157–160, May 1997 in San Francisco, Calif. Further descriptions can be found in Grenchus, “Overview of IBM's Demanufacturing Process,” presented at the Demanufacturing of Electronic Equipment Conference, October 1997, Deerfield Beach, Fla. and by Grenchus et al. in “Process of Demanufacturing Computer Equipment at IBM's Asset Recovery Center,” published in the conference proceedings of the '98 Industrial Engineering SOLUTIONS conference held May 1998 in Banff, Alberta, Canada pages 62–67. The three proceeding documents are incorporated herein by reference.
Upon receipt at a recycling point, the product may be re-sold perhaps with some minimal testing of operability etc. It may be wholly or partially disassembled to remove parts if any, which have a resale value. The remaining product is then typically separated into basic materials such as plastics, precious metals, copper, steel, glass etc, to be sold for their commodity value. The recycling process is performed rapidly because large numbers of products must be handled in order to achieve economics of scale with products which have little or no value individually.
Masato in Japanese patent JP11165160A describes a system for dismantling which involves a merchandise code stuck on the surface of an apparatus. The code is read with an optical reader, and information necessary for dismantling is obtained from an information center where the information was previously accumulated. Use of the code therefore saves time and labor in the disassembly and dismantling.
Bergart in U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,936 describes a system and method for processing waste glass which may be used for the glass commodity noted above.
Boswell in “A Feedback Strategy for a Closed Loop End-of-Life Cycle Process,” presented at the IEE/IEEE International Conference on Clean Electronics Products and Technology, Edinburgh, UK, Oct. 9–11, 1995 describes a process for gathering data during de-manufacturing to feed back to product designers. The product designers can then use this input information to design products, including e.g. material selections, so that the products generate the best economic return during recycling at some future time. Although this feedback to designers process is of some benefit, it is based upon todays' economics to estimate what may or may not apply to recycling economics at a future time.
Jung in “The Conundrum of Computer Recycling” published in Resource Recycling Magazine, May 1999 points out that equipment recyclers must make constant decisions about the level of dismantling and material separation to pursue. This effort requires constant attention and employee retraining. Because of the high costs involved, Jung recommends a strategy of extending the life of existing equipment through upgrading and developing a company program for effectively managing end-of-life equipment.
Because of the rapid obsolence of products with a corresponding rapid change in product and part resale prices, a method and system of dismantling which can be rapidly determined using current resale, commodity and labor prices at the time a product arrives at the recycling point, is therefore needed. It is believed that such a method and system would constitute a significant improvement in the demanufacturing art.